The Arctic Event

Chapter Thirty

The Misha Crash Site

Gradually Jon Smith became aware of dawn growing beyond the overhead astrodome. He also became aware of an imbalance in the warmth surrounding him, a comfortable emphasis favoring his left side. Then came a very definite snuggle.

The congealed frost of his breath rasped on the cover of his Jaeger sleeping bag as Smith lifted his head to look around the radar-observer cabin. A second occupied Jaeger bag was nestled firmly against his. Valentina Metrace, in her catlike connoisseurship of comfort, had burrowed close in the night.

Smith couldn’t help but cock an eyebrow. Randi had been right. Where there was a will, there was most certainly a way.

Female companionship had not been a major factor in Smith’s life for some time. At first, in the direct aftermath of Sophia’s death, the concept had been too painful, too much a breaking of a faith. Then, afterward, emotional relationships had seemed an added complication in an already overly complex life. But now this particular female seemed to be making it clear in a hundred subtle and not so subtle ways that she intended to make herself a factor.

Exactly why was beyond Smith’s comprehension. He had always viewed himself as a fairly prosaic individual. Any romance that might cling to him was only a reflection of his careers, and likely a misunderstood one at that. He had always felt very fortunate to have gained the love of one beautiful and intelligent woman. To have this second bold, enigmatic and decidedly attractive female move deliberately into his orbit was an unexpected phenomenon.

He felt Valentina’s head lift, and she shook free of her sleeping bag’s hood and face flap, peering into his face from a range of a few inches. “I would cheerfully and without a moment’s hesitation kill,” she murmured, “for a long, hot soak in a bathtub, and a change of lingerie.”

“I could loan you a spare disinfectant towelette,” he replied.

“Your counteroffers are growing steadily more pathetic, but I suppose I’m stuck with it.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, and for a few moments they lay together in the bizarre little pocket of intimacy they had found on the ice-slickened deck of the ancient bomber. The wind outside had subsided to only the faintest intermittent whisper. In the crew’s cabin aft, they could hear Gregori Smyslov snoring softly in his bunk.

The night before, Smith had been careful in the way he had arranged their gear to make sleeping room on the deck. He’d propped his loaded packframe in the hatchway between the compartments, stacking his snowshoes atop them, rendering a silent access to the radar-observer space impossible. The necessity of that action and the angular feel of his sidearm under the wadded bulk of his parka pillow pushed his momentary nonprofessional musing about Valentina Metrace into abeyance.

“What is it, Val?” he said under his breath. “What are the Russians hiding? You have some ideas, don’t you?”

She hesitated; then he felt the shake of her head, her soft hair brushing his chin. “Not that I’m prepared to say, Jon. The historian in me is appalled by the concept of providing poor history, and the spy, of giving poor intelligence. But we’ve got to find the survival camp. If there are any absolute answers to be found, we’ll find them there.”

“I can understand that. But that’s only one set of answers. The Russians are only one factor of what I’m coming to see as a three-point equation. The other two points are who is on the island now and who may be coming for the anthrax. I left Randi hanging back there as bait for whoever may be here now.”

“Shouldn’t worry, Jon. Anyone who endeavors to gulp down our Ms. Russell is going to find himself gagging on her…and I mean that in the best of possible connotations.”

“I know. She can take care of herself.”

“But you’ll still blame yourself if anything happens to her. As you still do for the deaths of her sister and her fiancé.”

Smith scowled down at the top of her head. “How the hell did you know about that?”

“Randi and I discussed you rather intensively one evening,” Valentina replied. “A species of girl talk. I’ve also studied you for a bit, and I’ve come to certain conclusions of my own. You’re one of those poor bastards stuck in the middle-tough enough to make the blood decisions, but with enough humanity left for it to gnaw at you. It’s a difficult balance to maintain. That makes you rare and worth keeping. That’s why, in due course, we’re going to become lovers.”

Smith couldn’t prevent the soft bark of laughter that escaped him. He had wondered, and he had been given an answer. “I see. Don’t I have any say in the matter?”

Valentina nestled contentedly again, tucking her head in under his chin. “No, not really. Don’t bother yourself about it now, Jon. I’ll handle all the details.”

She had to be joking in her usual quirky manner. But there was something about the calm woman’s surety in her voice that didn’t seem to apply to that scenario. He couldn’t help but recall the last lingering warmth of her lips on his yesterday, and he had a sudden urge to experience that warmth again.

Then the muzzy grumble and stirring of Major Smyslov in the next compartment broke the fragile bubble and returned them to the bleak reality of Wednesday Island.

It was a pale gray world atop the saddleback glacier. The dully luminous cloud cover hid the tops of the peaks and faded the horizons to the north and south into a vague nonvisibility. The surface snow and ice had been infected by the grayness as well, losing their luster. Only the dark exposed rock of the mountain flanks stood out, extruding from the dingy-paper whiteness with an exaggerated three-dimensionality. The immediate visibility around the downed bomber and the three human flyspecks standing beside it was good, yet it was difficult to truly see. Amid the blanched contrasts it was hard to gauge sizes and distances, and something akin to vertigo intermittently tugged at the consciousness.

Jon Smith felt the effect as he panned his binoculars in their instinctive slow circle, seeing nothing either desired or unwanted.

“All right, lady and gentleman, where are they?” he asked. “Where did they go after the crash?”

“I would say down the coast, Colonel,” Smyslov replied swiftly. “They would need food, and there is nothing to be had here. Along the coast there would be seals and bears. There would also be better opportunities for shelter. The weather up here on the glacier would be too bad.”

Valentina shook her hooded head. “No, I disagree, Gregori. They made their survival camp up here, probably within sight of this aircraft.”

“If they did, it’s pretty well hidden.” Smith returned his binoculars to their case. “And the major makes a pretty good case about the food. What brings you to your conclusion, Val?”

“A number of things,” she replied. “For one, the stripped state of the aircraft. It would take a lot of work and a lot of trips to move all of that material out of the wreck. They wouldn’t have carried it far. For another, they wouldn’t be immediately concerned about food. They would have had emergency rations for at least a couple of weeks, and they weren’t planning to stay around for that long.”

“Would they have had much choice?”

“They thought so, Jon. These people were not planning on setting up housekeeping. They intended to go home. Remember how they pulled the radio and radar systems out of the plane, as well as the auxiliary power unit? They had all of the components and expertise they needed to build one hellaciously powerful radio transmitter, one that could reach halfway around the world, and certainly back to Russia. That’s another reason they’d want to stay up here. The higher elevation would increase their broadcast and reception range.”

“Then why didn’t they use it?” Smith asked.

“I don’t know.” Smith could feel the words the historian didn’t want to speak aloud. He turned toward Smyslov. “What do you think, Major?”

The Russian shook his head. “I must disagree, Colonel. If they had built such a radio, they would have called for rescue. Obviously they did not.”

Whoever had chosen Gregori Smyslov had made one critical error with the man. He could lie well with his mouth, but not with his eyes or body language. The Russian’s words only emphasized a subtle change that had crept into the team’s dynamics overnight. Once more it had become an us-versus-them scenario, with Smyslov standing alone.

And yet, Smith pondered, if it was an us-versus-them, why hadn’t Smyslov simply allowed him to suffocate in the bomb bay the previous afternoon? He’d had a blank check to kill.

“We’ve got to find out which one of you is right, and fast,” Smith continued. “We know the anthrax is in the wreck. We know that someone else positively knows about it. We must assume these individuals are en route to collect it. Given that the hostiles have gone active on the island, we must also assume that we may have only hours before their main body arrives.”

Smyslov spoke up sharply. “Colonel, given the situation, should not we immediately return to the base camp? Our priority must be to resume contact with our superiors.”

There could be no doubt about it. Smyslov wanted not to find that survival camp as urgently as Valentina wanted to locate it, and probably for the same reason.

“A valid point, Major, but we will still make a sweep up here for the aircrew’s survival camp.” Smith extended his hand and swept it from north to south, covering the eastern edge of the glacier. “Granted that Professor Metrace is correct, the crew’s best bet for finding shelter should be along there, the base of East Peak.”

“The camp may have been well drifted over during the last fifty years,” Valentina added, slinging the model 70 over her shoulder. “So I’d suggest watching for shapes, especially straight linear ones, under the surface of the snow.”

“Got it. Any other questions? Okay, let’s move out.” Smith kept his own rifle cradled in his arms as they started the trudge across the ice.

Smith worked to the north, angling across the saddleback to the point where the glacier broke into a wicked blocky tumble of shattered ice, a miniature Beardmore that slumped down the front face of the island to the narrow coastal strip. From that point, according to the plan, they swept back across the gap. Advancing line abreast at twenty-yard intervals, they scouted the broken stone and ice interface along the base of the eastern peak.

Valentina kept to the inside slot, ranging along the bottom of the slope with the eager intensity of a hunting bird dog. Smith took the center point in the line while Smyslov stayed on the outer flank. In addition to watching the glacial surface, Smith found himself covering Val as she worked and eyeing the mountain slopes above for a variety of potential threats: snow cornices, avalanche chutes, and the possibility of camouflaged observers.

He also found himself intermittently watching Gregori Smyslov out of the corner of his eye. Was the Russian looking for something else beyond the remains of the lost aircrew? Who was he waiting for, and what would be the key that would trigger him into action? And what would that action be?

They passed the crash site and climbed the last hundred gently sloping yards to the central ridge of the saddleback. Smith paused for a moment in his trudging advance to survey the greater world.

The sea smoke was closing in around Wednesday once more, the mists lapping at the island’s flanks, killing the horizons and enhancing the unworldly sense of isolation. For a moment the saddleback was a literal island in the sky, sandwiched in a layer of clarity between the fog and the overcast. How long it would last was questionable.

It didn’t really matter. Soon they must break off the search and head back for the station. And maybe just as well. If Val was right, locating the camp of the downed aircrew might be the activation point of the Russian alternate agenda. Maybe it would be wiser to eat this apple one bite at a time, keeping Smyslov as an ally. Deal with the anthrax question first; then force the confrontation.

Smith turned and then stumbled as his right crampon snagged momentarily. Automatically he glanced down at the obstruction.

The spiked toe of his arctic boot had kicked up and exposed a short length of wire, its black insulation crumbling with age and cold.

Smith hesitated for one moment more. It would be easy enough to scrape a boot edge of snow over it and just keep going. But then, not knowing had been at the heart of this crisis from the beginning. Deliberately courting ignorance now simply didn’t make sense. Smith shifted his rifle to his left hand and lifted the right over his head, the fist clinched in the rally signal.

“It’s Soviet,” Smyslov confirmed, kneeling beside the exposed wire. “A trailing antenna. The kind that could be streamed behind an aircraft for long-range communications.”

“Laying an insulated aerial across the ice has been a communications expedient used in polar environments before,” Valentina confirmed.

“But where is the radio set?” Smyslov asked, getting back to his feet. “Where is the camp? There is nothing, only the wire.”

“The easiest way to resolve that question is to follow it.” Smith pointed toward the base of east peak. “Thataway.”

The antenna had melted into the frozen surface like a thread across an ice cube, but the incessant scouring of the winds had kept it buried only a few inches deep. Exposing the antenna as they went, they found that it swept in a shallow curve, having drifted with the flow of the glacier. At one point stress had snapped the thin wire, but the broken end was located only a few feet away. Surprisingly it led toward an almost sheer blank-faced wall of basalt rock, vanishing into the shoulder-high drift of hard-packed snow at its base.

“What the hell?”

Undaunted, Valentina Metrace unslung her pack and rifle and drew her belt knife. Dropping to her knees, she began to tunnel into the drift like an industrious badger. After a moment Smith and Smyslov joined her.

It swiftly became apparent that the drifted snow was packed into an overhang in the black rock, a groove rasped into the side of the mountain by the incessant sawing drag of the glacier. And then Smith noticed the texture of the snow changing. It was growing more solid, and it was as if a pattern had been worked into it.

“These are snow blocks!” Valentina exclaimed.

It was true. Someone had used building blocks of compacted snow, igloolike, to build a wall within the overhang. Over the decades, the blocks had cold-welded together into a solid glassy mass that resisted the stabbing knife blades, but their resistance couldn’t prevent them from eventually yielding.

“Canvas! This is it! It’s a cave!”

The snow wall and the ancient canvas windscreen behind it collapsed into darkness. And the icy dankness of long unstirred air flowed out.

Smith retrieved the big electric lantern from his pack and played the beam into the mouth of the cavern. The tunnel was perhaps six feet wide and low enough so that even Valentina would be forced to stoop to enter. Small, jagged stalactites of black rock studded the cave roof.

“A lava tube,” Smith commented.

“To be expected on a volcanic island,” Valentina agreed. “Look, on the floor.”

The antenna wire and what looked like a hose extended from beneath the small avalanche of snow and ice they had created, to loop around a bend in the tunnel perhaps ten feet ahead.

“This must be it,” Valentina repeated. Hunching down, she started along the tunnel.

“Just a second.” Smith passed the historian her rifle, then caught up his own SR-25. “Let’s get the gear inside and out of sight, just in case.”

“I will take care of it, Colonel,” Smyslov spoke up.

“All right, we’ll wait for you if we find anything interesting.” Smith removed a couple of hand flares from his pack and moved into the cave after Valentina.

Smyslov lugged the packs inside the cave, then paused for a moment outside its mouth, taking a last long look around.

The others, the members of the Spetsnaz covering force, were here. He had seen no sign of their presence, but that wasn’t surprising. The men chosen for this task would be snow devils, invisible in this white world, leaving no hint of their presence or passage.

But they were present. He could feel them. They had been ordered to keep the crash site and its environs under strict observation. They would be watching him now, waiting for the one order Smyslov was authorized to give. The one command that would bring them in to kill.

If only the bloody political officer had done his bloody job!

Maybe then this all could be mended somehow. Maybe then he could regain control of the situation and stop any further escalation. But he must also be prepared to invoke the alternative. He must be ready to perform his duty.

Smyslov unzipped his parka and moved the stainless steel cigarette lighter to an outside pocket. Then he pulled the Velcro retaining tab on his belt holster and drew the model 92 Beretta he had been issued by the Americans. Ignoring the irony of readying a weapon for use against its owners, he checked the clip seating with a pop of his palm against the bottom of the handgrip. Drawing back the slide, he manually jacked a shell into the pistol’s chamber.

Snapping off the safety, he returned the Beretta to its holster. Soon he would know if he would need it.

“Quite the setup,” Valentina murmured.

Around the bend in the tunnel they had found the auxiliary power unit that had been taken from the bomber. The length of hose led from the mouth of the cave to the exhaust outlet of the engine. Just beyond the generator set and connected to it via a set of batteries and power leads was a patched-together but impressive-looking radio rig.

The ever-present frost covered its exposed banks of old-fashioned vacuum tubes and control dials. Tools and unused electronics components were stacked around the set, and a transmitter key lay on a scrap-wood table positioned in front of the set, along with a set of earphones removed by an operator half a century before.

“I knew it,” she went on in a whisper. “I knew it the minute I saw the stripped chassis in the bomber!”

The duralumin radio operator’s stool had been taken from the plane, and Valentina sank onto it. Her hands lifted, but she acted as if she were afraid to touch anything. “There’s a pencil here, Jon. There’s a pencil but no paper. This is a communications desk. There should be paper! A log, notes, something!”

Smith panned the wide beam of the lantern around the gut of the passage. “Wait a minute…” The light fell on a blackened bucket set against the rocky wall. “Here we go.”

He took up the bucket by its bail and set it beside the stool.

“What is it?” Valentina asked, looking down.

“It’s a fire can,” Smith replied, hunkering beside the bucket. “It’s been half-filled with crushed pumice. It acts like a wick, like sand. Slosh a little gasoline in there and light it, and you’d have a steady flame for heat and cooking.”

Valentina nodded. “And they would have a few thousand gallons of aviation fuel lying about.”

“But something else has been burned in this one.” Smith drew his knife and probed amid the charred rock. “See that? That’s paper ash, a lot of it. I’ll bet that’s your radio log and maybe a set of code books, too.”

“Somebody cleaned house.”

In the lantern light their eyes met, and they communicated without words for a moment. There was no reason that this radio set shouldn’t have worked. There was no reason for this castaway aircrew not to have communicated with the world. There was no reason they shouldn’t have summoned help.

Gregori Smyslov shuffled around the corner of the tunnel from the outside, snapping on his own flashlight. “All is secure, Colonel.”

Smith kept his face poker-neutral. “Okay, let’s keep going.”

He turned and continued down the tunnel. A few yards farther on, the lava tube they were in broke through into a second larger, lower chamber. Slabs of basalt had been crudely aligned to create a set of uneven steps down a jagged collapsed facing. The porous black volcanic rock simply drank up the flashlight beams, and the darkness continued to predominate. It was not until Smith and his team had made the cautious descent to the floor of the chamber that they realized they were not alone.

Smith heard Valentina gasp from close by at his side, and Smyslov swore under his breath in Russian. The lantern beam panned across scattered items of survival gear, the bits of random trash produced around a lived-in camp, and finally, against the rear cavern wall, a row of huddled unmoving forms in canvas-skinned sleeping bags.

Their search for the crew of the Misha 124 was over.

Smith took one of the flares from his parka pocket and struck the igniter. Brilliant red chemical flame spewed from it, pushing back the darkness. He shoved the base of the flare into a crack in the wall.

“I wonder what got them in the end?” Valentina spoke softly, almost to herself.

“I don’t think it was the cold,” Smith replied. “They seemed pretty well set up for that.”

The sleeping bags were heavy arctic issue, and they were well insulated from the cavern floor by heavy pads of seat cushioning, life raft fabric, and parachute silk, all the materials that had been stripped from the downed aircraft. There were also several fire buckets positioned around the floor of the house-sized cavern, and a couple of gasoline jerry cans had been cached in one corner. It was obvious the bomber’s crew had known their polar survival procedures.

“It wasn’t starvation, either.” Valentina stepped up beside the first of the bodies and pointed to an open tin of survival ration crackers and a half bar of chocolate balanced on a small ledge in the cavern wall.

The historian glanced at the body at her feet and frowned. “Jon, come here. Look at this.”

Smith stepped to her side and instantly spotted the point of concern.

Before going to sleep fifty-odd years before, the sleeping bag’s occupant had drawn a flap of parachute silk over his face as a frost shield. A small circular hole was punched neatly in the center of that fabric.

Smith leaned his rifle against the cave wall and sank to one knee, flipping back the ice-crinkly silk. Revealed was a pleasant-featured young man’s face, pale, sleep-peaceful, frozen in time. The eyes were closed, and in the center of the forehead was another small circular hole, smeared with a few drops of blood, made red once more by the flickering light of the flare.

“Well, now,” Smith murmured. “A handgun, medium caliber, low velocity. Fired at close range, but not point-blank. No powder burns.”

“7.65mm subsonic, I’ll wager,” Valentina agreed, bending down with her hands braced on her knees, “probably fired through a silencer.”

“Probably.” Smith rose and circled to the next body. “The same here. One shot, through the temple. Execution style.”

“Very much so,” Valentina agreed, walking slowly down the row of bedrolls. “They were asleep, and someone just walked down the line and took the crew out, one after another…but not all of them.”

“Why do you say that, Val?”

“There are only six men here, Jon. The minimum complement for an America bomber would be eight.” She played the beam of her flashlight back into the shadowed corners of the cavern, beyond the pool of flare light. “There will be at least two others…Ah, here we are.”

She stepped deeper into the cavern, making her way around several table-sized chunks of fallen basalt. Smith went after her. Neither of them noted Gregori Smyslov silently falling back toward the lava tube entrance.

A man clad in khaki-colored duffel pants and parka lay on the black rock floor of the lava tube. The front of his coat was black with blood and punctured by multiple bullet holes. Curled in a frozen death writhe, the dead man’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in a half-century-old snarl. A few inches from his outstretched hand lay a small automatic pistol with the long cylinder of a silencer screwed to its barrel.

Smith lifted the lantern beam beyond the seventh man and found the eighth.

There was a niche in the back wall of the cave. Within it were two bedrolls, one of which was empty. An older aviation officer lay on his back, half out of the second sleeping bag, a hand-sized patch of blood frozen in place in the middle of his chest. A Soviet-issue Tokarev service pistol was still clutched in his fist.

His killer had apparently learned too late that a man with a bullet through his heart can still have fourteen seconds of life and consciousness left to him.

Valentina made her way to the seventh man. Bending down, she undid the top button of his parka and examined the insignia on the flight suit collar underneath. “The bombardier and political officer.”

Straightening, she crossed to the eighth man and repeated her examination. “The aircraft commander.”

“Apparently there was a falling-out among the upper echelons.”

“Apparently.” She looked back at Smith. “It seems pretty straightforward. They’d turned in for the night, and the political officer either had the watch or he got up again after the others had fallen asleep. He walked down the line and methodically murdered his fellow crewmen. Then he came back here to kill the aircraft commander. The problem was that a silencer’s effectiveness degrades with every bullet you put through it, and that last round must have made a wee bit too much noise.”

“But, damn it, Val, why?”

“Orders, Jon. It had to be under orders, given to the one member of the crew fanatically dedicated enough to the will of the Communist Party to commit both mass murder and suicide.”

Smith’s brows shot up. “Suicide?”

“Um-hum,” the historian nodded. “I’m reasonably certain that his orders included using the last round in the clip on himself. I daresay he didn’t have a great deal of choice in the matter, because it’s apparent nobody was coming after them. I suspect that another aspect of his program was to torch the wreck, and probably this material along with it.”

She extended the toe of her boot and tapped a canvas-covered aircraft log and a stack of heavy buckram envelopes that lay beside the bomber commander’s bedroll, some of them still bearing Soviet Air Force security seals over their flaps. “Oh, but I wish I could read Russian.”

“Randi can,” Smith replied, shaking his head. “But ordering one of your own aircrews slaughtered like this? That doesn’t make any sense!”

“It doesn’t make sense to you, Jon, and it doesn’t make sense to me, but it made sense to the Stalinists. Remember the KGB barrage battalions that would follow Soviet Army units into battle. Their mission tasking wasn’t to shoot at the enemy, but at any Soviet soldiers reluctant to die for the glory of the Workers’ Revolution. If it was a matter of state security they wouldn’t have even blinked.”

“But what the hell were they trying to hide?”

“Speaking frankly, I’ve been scared to think about it…Hello, what have we here?”

She knelt down and picked up something from beside the logbook. Smith saw that it was a man’s wallet. With her flashlight tucked awkwardly between her cheek and shoulder, Valentina started to leaf through it. Suddenly she stiffened, the flashlight slipping away to bounce on the cavern floor. “My dear God!”

Smith hastily stepped up beside her. “Val, what is it?”

Wordlessly she thrust the wallet into his hands. Balancing the lantern on a boulder top, Smith sank down on one knee and examined its contents.

Money, American money: half a dozen twenties, two fives, and a ten. Worn, well-used bills. A driver’s license, Michigan 1952, issued to an Oscar Olson. A Marquette city library card and a social security card both made out to the same name. A pair of ticket stubs to the AirView Drive-in Theater. A cash register slip for eighty-seven cents from Bromberg’s corner grocery.

“Val, what does this mean?…Val?”

The historian was standing beside him, a blank, totally stunned expression on her face. Suddenly, without speaking, she dropped to her knees beside the body of the aircraft commander, tearing at the front of the long-dead man’s flight suit. Buttons popped as she ripped it open, revealing a black and red checked lumberjack shirt. She clawed furiously at the collar, fighting the resistance of the stiffly frozen corpse. Cloth tore, and she produced the maker’s tag from the back of the neck.

“Montgomery Ward!” She almost threw the tag at Smith. Then she scrambled across the cavern floor and was at the body of the Misha’s political officer, forcing open his parka and flight suit, revealing a civilian suit jacket layered beneath it.

“Sears and Roebuck,” she whispered. “Sears…and…bloody…Roebuck!” Her voice rose to a strangled scream. “Smyslov, you son of a bitch! Where are you?”

“I am here, Professor.”

Smith stood up and turned at the quiet voice, and then he froze. Smyslov had come in behind them. He stood outlined in the glare of the flare Smith had left in the main part of the chamber, the ruddy light reflecting off the leveled Beretta automatic in his hand. “Put up your hands. Both of you. Please do not attempt anything. Other Russian troops will be here shortly.”

“What the hell is this, Major?” Smith demanded, slowly lifting his hands shoulder high.

“A very regrettable situation, Colonel. If you do not resist, you will not be harmed.”

“That’s a lie, Jon,” Valentina said calmly, coming to stand beside Smith, her voice and anger back under control. “The Russians’ alternate agenda is now fully in play. They can’t allow us to leave this cave alive.”

The Beretta’s barrel jerked in her direction. “That’s not…Something can be worked out…alternatives…” Smyslov gritted the words through clenched teeth.

“There are none.” Valentina’s words were understanding, almost kindly. “You know that. The Misha’s political officer made a cock-up of his job. There was too much left for us to find, and you couldn’t stop us from finding it. I know, Gregori, and, given a reference book or two, Colonel Smith could figure it out. We have to die, just like these other poor bastards in this cave had to die. There’s no other way to keep the secret.”

Smyslov didn’t reply.

“Since I can figure it out, how about letting me in on it now?” Smith asked, his eyes fixed on the shadowed features of the Russian.

“Why not indeed?” Valentina replied. “It all leads back to the attack doctrines of the Soviet Long Range Aviation Forces during the early Cold War…”

The gun muzzle elevated. “Keep silent, Professor!”

“There’s no sense in letting the colonel die in ignorance, Gregori.” Valentina’s tone was almost bantering but with a biting edge to it. “After all, you’re going to be putting a bullet through his brain here presently.”

She glanced across at Smith. “Remember, Jon, when I told you how all of the American bomber missions must, perforce, be one-way? The TU-4 Bull just barely had the range to reach targets in the northern states by flying over the Pole, but they didn’t have the fuel to get back again. The aircrews would have to bail out over the United States after dropping their bomb loads.

“With this as a given, the Soviets decided it was a matter of waste not, want not. The America bomber crews received special training. They were taught how to speak idiomatic American English. They were cycled through the KGB’s American town mock-up to adapt them to the nuances of the Western lifestyle, and they were instructed in espionage and sabotage techniques.

“It was intended that the surviving Soviet aircrewmen would merge with the masses of refugees that would be produced in the aftermath of a massive ABC attack on the United States. Once in place, they would spy, spread defeatist propaganda, and conduct sabotage, hastening the day of the theoretical Soviet triumph. Do I have that down properly, Gregori?”

Again there was no reply.

“And the wallet, the civilian clothes?” Smith prompted.

“All part of it, Jon. The KGB were meticulous about such details. The crews would be issued American-manufactured clothing purchased in the United States, real American currency, and superbly forged identification, complete down to the inconsequential little bits and pieces a person would routinely carry in a wallet or a pocket.

“But there was one problem.” Valentina’s voice flowed on, almost hypnotically. “The raving paranoia that raged inside Stalinist Russia. The party and high presidium knew that a fair proportion of their populace, including members of their most elite military formations, desired nothing more out of life than a suit of civilian clothes, a set of documents identifying them as anything other than a Soviet citizen, and a clean run at an unguarded border.

“While the Soviets might have loaded a live bioagent aboard a long-range bomber for a simple training mission, they would never have given the flight crew their American identity kits. The potential for defection would have been viewed as too great.”

Valentina’s hand stabbed at the wallet still held in Smith’s hand. “The clothing and identification would only have been issued for an actual combat operation. The real thing!”

Smith found himself staring at the wallet in his hand. “Are you saying what I think you are, Val?”

“Oh, I am, Jon.” Her voice began to lift, growing more piercing. “This is why the Russians were so bloody shaken over the discovery of that old bomber. That’s why their official schizophrenia over the whole subject. The damn anthrax has been a secondary concern for them all along. What they’ve really been worried about is our learning the truth! That the Misha 124 was a pathfinder aircraft for an all-out strategic bombing attack on the United States using nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons! The Pearl Harbor of World War Three!”

She let the words hang in the chill air of the cavern for a moment; then she tilted her head and addressed Smyslov directly. “How about it, Gregori? I dare you to tell me I’m wrong.”

They could hear Smyslov’s breath rasp, the mist it produced swirling around his head in the back glow of the flare. “Nations make mistakes, Professor. Yours has made its mistakes. We have made ours, greater perhaps than some. Can you blame us for trying to hide the fact that we almost destroyed the world?”

“You’re making another mistake now, Major,” Smith said. “Killing us won’t make things any better.”

“Please, Colonel.” There was an earnestness in Smyslov’s reply. “I give you my word! I will communicate with my superiors. I will make every effort to protect you and Professor Metrace and Miss Russell. I will get the orders changed! We will find…some other way!”

“You’ll reopen a gulag just for us?” Smith smiled and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He lowered his hands and tucked the wallet into a parka pocket. “Put down the gun, Major. This thing is over. We’ve learned what we’ve come for.”

The barrel lifted, ominously steadying on Smith’s chest. “Don’t force me to act, Colonel. I may regret the situation, but I am still a Russian officer.”

“And that’s an American firearm, issued to you by us. Believe me, Major, it’s not going to do you any good.”

A hint of amusement crept into Smyslov’s voice. “I trust you are not going to attempt anything as puerile as telling me you have removed the firing pin.”

“Oh, no,” Valentina said, dropping her own hands. “You might have spotted a missing firing pin. But the Beretta 92-series automatic pistol does have an internal bar lock safety intended to prevent the accidental discharge of the weapon. If you diddle with it a bit, it can be made to prevent deliberate discharges as well. And yes, Gregori, in addition to my myriad other gifts, talents, and charms, I am a rather capable gunsmith.”

Smyslov made the only sane and sensible reply a man in his position could make. The hammer of the leveled Beretta fell at the pull of its trigger-a flat, futile snap that echoed lightly in the cavern. “So I see, Professor.”

“It wasn’t a matter of trust, Major.” Smith took a step toward the Russian. “It was a matter of being sensible.”

“I quite understand, Colonel.” Smyslov’s hand whipped back, and he hurled the inert automatic full into Smith’s face, following through with a headlong diving attack.

Smith had been fully expecting the move, and he ducked, letting the thrown pistol glance off a hunched shoulder. Still, Smyslov’s grappling charge caught him low, carrying him backward to pile up with a crash on the cave floor, the Russian landing on top of him.

To further complicate matters, the flare that illuminated the central cave chamber chose that moment to burn out, plunging them into a darkness broken only by the swath of light issuing from the electric lantern.

Smith was disoriented for a moment, but he could feel the shift of Smylsov’s weight and the bunching of his muscles as the Russian’s arm cocked back to strike. Smith twisted his head aside, felt the brush of the blow skidding past his chin, and heard the explosive curse as Smyslov’s fist slammed into the stone of the cave floor.

Smith tried to throw Smyslov off but failed, his movements hampered by his heavy swaddling of arctic clothing. Smyslov found himself hampered in the same way. He clawed for Smith’s eyes but found the move rendered ineffectual by his thick-fingered gloves. He tried again, going for a grip on Smith’s throat while he groped at his belt for his sheath knife.

Smith’s left hand came up and closed on the collar of Smyslov’s parka, giving him range and position; then he struck with the heel of his right hand, connecting under the Russian’s chin, the blow snapping Smyslov’s head back and raking destructively up and across his features.

The beam of the lantern swung around to cover the two struggling men, and a moment later there came the hollow clonk of a heavy blow being landed. Smyslov went abruptly limp.

“That took long enough,” Smith grunted, rolling the unconscious Russian onto the cave floor.

“I wanted to make sure who was on top, Jon,” Valentina replied, lowering the reversed model 70. “I didn’t want to do a Benny Hill and cold-knock you by mistake.”

“I can appreciate that.” Smith got to his knees and examined the prostrate Russian. Removing his glove, he checked the carotid pulse. “He’s still with us. He’s out but not too deep.”

“Do you view that as a positive or a negative?” Valentina inquired.

“I’d call it a positive. He still has things he can tell us. Beyond that, the poor bastard’s right-he is a Russian officer just following orders. In the meantime it sounds like he may have invited friends. Can you hold the cave mouth while I secure the major here?”

“Not a problem.” She hurried for the entrance tunnel.

By the lantern light Smith dug a Mylar survival blanket and a couple of pairs of disposacuffs out of his pockets. Binding Smyslov’s wrists and ankles, he rolled the Russian onto the insulating sheet of the blanket. Glancing around, Smith noted a sizable stump of candle stuck in a wall niche by its own wax. A half century old or not, it still burned when Smith lit it, providing a scrap of long-term illumination within the cave.

Kneeling down once more, he rechecked Smyslov’s vital signs. Pulse strong, breathing regular, and the slight puffiness at the back of his head indicated that the swelling from Valentina’s butt stroke was developing outward. He’d live and should regain consciousness shortly. Even though Smyslov had declared himself a member of the opposing camp and had pulled that trigger on him, Smith didn’t bear a personal grudge. Smyslov was a soldier in the service of his nation, just as Smith was. It was the fortunes of war, and now, likely, it was war. One with no guarantees of victory for either side.

Smith caught up his own rifle and started for the cave mouth.

Valentina was lying prone behind the frozen rubble of the snow wall, using the telescopic sights of the model 70 to scan the glacier.

“Any activity?” Smith dropped beside her and drew back the bolt of the SR-25.

“I haven’t seen anything yet,” she replied, lifting her face from the rifle scope. “Of course, that may not mean all that much.”

Smith took her meaning. As both the ninja of medieval Japan and the Apache warrior of the American Southwest had proved, it was completely possible to be invisible in plain sight. It was just a matter of knowing how to go about it.

“I did find this just outside of the cave mouth, though.” Valentina held up a silver cigarette lighter.

“Smyslov’s?”

“So I would suspect. Look…” She turned the lighter upside down and squeezed some concealed catch. There was a soft snick of a releasing spring, and a short spike antenna extended from what had looked like the filler cap. “A radio transponder beacon operating on a preset frequency. When the penny dropped with its loud resounding clang, friend Gregori only had to push the button to call down the wolves.”

“That’s a pretty small transmitter,” Smith replied, uncasing his binoculars. “They must be close by. I wonder what’s holding them back.”

“It could be they’re waiting for their Judas goat to give them the final high sign.” Valentina pressed the antenna back into the lighter/transponder, then snuggled in behind her rifle sights again. “I wonder why he tried to take us alone as he did. Grandstanding?”

“It’s just barely possible he was trying to keep us from getting killed, Val,” Smith replied.

“Oh, really? You think?”

“I like to maintain a positive worldview.”

From the protection of the shadowed interior the two scanned the approaches to the cave mouth for long, silent minutes. Nothing seemed to move on the ice save for an occasional wisp of snow slithering past in the wind. Then the tracking barrel of the model 70 stopped and steadied like a pointer dog fixing on a game bird.

“Jon.” Valentina’s voice was casual. “At our two o’clock, about two hundred and fifty yards out, just beside that little uplift.”

Smith swung his binoculars onto the called target. It took him a few moments to pick up the low ridge in the glacier surface. There was nothing out there that looked like a man. But there was a small drift built up at the foot of the ridge. There was nothing exceptional about the lump of snow. Nothing outstanding. But there was something subtly wrong just the same. The drift’s contours didn’t quite match the fractile flow of its surroundings.

“I think there’s something there,” Smith said finally, “but I can’t be sure.”

“Neither can I. So let’s…just…make sure.” There was a piercing whip-crack report as the vicious little.220 round screamed on its way. The “snowdrift” quivered under the impact of the hypervelocity hollowpoint. Then as Smith looked on, a dot of color became apparent on the whiteness. Spreading, it became a stain, the red of the spilling blood darkened by the overcast.

Valentina flipped open the Winchester’s bolt, ejecting the spent brass. “Well, now we know.”

“Indeed we do.” Smith nodded slowly. “Probably one of their fourteen-man Spetsnaz platoons. Anything bigger would have been spotted by our satellites.”

“Um-hum.” She drew a fresh round from the shell carrier, pressing it into the Winchester’s magazine. “I’ll wager they’ll be out of the Vladivostok garrison, either Mongolian Siberians or Yakut tribesmen under a Russian officer. The Soviets used them to guard the gulags. They’re totally adapted to an arctic environment and generally nasty to cross. Arms-wise, I think we can expect AK-74 assault rifles and at least three RPK-74 squad automatic weapons. They’ll be in light marching order in this terrain, so I don’t think we’ll see an RPG grenade launcher.”

“But they will have rifle grenades.” Smith looked across at her. “I figure you understand where that leaves us.”

Valentina lifted an eyebrow. “Very much so. For the moment we’ve got the range on them. As long as we can keep them out there with the long guns, we’re all right. But as soon as night falls or the weather closes in and they can work closer to, oh, say, about seventy-five yards, we’re quite dead.”